Hein Verbruggen, the former president of the International Cycling Union
(UCI), has said he does not "understand the whole fuss" over the
Lance Armstrong doping scandal.

Defiant: Hein Verbruggen (pictured in 1998), the former president of the International Cycling Union, has said he is not to blame for the doping problems that hit the sport during his time in chargePhoto: AP

Verbruggen, who was the head of cycling's world governing body from 1991 to 2005, also said that he was "not responsible" for the numerous doping scandals to have damaged the sport over the years.

The 71 year-old Dutchman, who is an honorary president of the UCI and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has been named in reports that claim the UCI were handed suspicious donations from Armstrong following an alleged positive test at the 2001 edition of the Tour of Switzerland.

Armstrong, who won seven Tours de France during Verbruggen's tenure, was stripped of his titles last year before he was handed a lifetime ban from the sport. The Texan's first interview following his ban is due to be broadcast on Friday morning at 2am (GMT) after he met with Oprah Winfrey earlier this week.

Despite the sport appearing on the brink of implosion and a very real threat of cycling being dropped form the Olympic Games, Verbruggen remains oblivious to the damage that has been done to the sport following the United States Anti-doping Agency's (USADA) damning 1,000 page report into doping in Armstrong's US Postal Service team in the late 1990s.

Verbruggen, who last year said that “Armstrong [had] never used doping", now claims that "nobody knew anything [about Armstrong's doping] for sure. We [the UCI] knew as much as the journalists."

His latest claims may surprise many, particularly L'Equipe journalist Damien Ressiot, David Walsh of the Sunday Times and his former colleague Paul Kimmage, who worked tirelessly throughout the years to rid cycling of its dopers.

“If you test someone 215 times and he is always negative, then the problem is in the test itself. I'm not responsible," Verbruggen said in an interview with Dutch magazine DeMuur. "I don't understand the whole fuss at all."

Verbruggen, meanwhile, admitted that accepting Armstrong's donation of around £62,000 which led to accusations of bribery and hush money was a mistake. “In retrospect, I should not have taken the money,” he said.